


Terribly Dangerous

by TheGreatSporkWielder



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatSporkWielder/pseuds/TheGreatSporkWielder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't you know any planets that are not terribly dangerous and don't have a thing for red-headed women or grudges against bow ties or two-thousand year-old former robots?" Post-"Big Bang."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terribly Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own "Doctor Who." This is also posted at FFN, under the same penname, if it looks familiar.

“So,” Rory hears Amy say as he walks down the hallway, “where are we off to now?” He imagines that she's leaning against a railing, twirling a lock of her hair around one finger. She'd made a mad dash to a bedroom as soon as the TARDIS doors had shut behind them, and Rory thinks that if he were to go into the bedroom, he'd find her wedding dress in a snowy heap in the middle of the floor, her heels kicked off and probably landing on the nightstand or the middle of the bed. Just before he goes into the room Amy's voice is coming from, he notices a coat rack. “Thanks,” he says to the air (he's still getting used to the idea that the TARDIS can actually understand him), and he gets the impression that the TARDIS is pleased. He hangs his top hat and coat on the rack and continues his way into the console room, catching the tail end of the Doctor's reply.

 

“---Rory’s turn to choose?”

 

“Eh, he won’t care,” says Amy, waving a hand dismissively. “As long it’s not _too_ dangerous.”

 

“Choose what? And what’s not dangerous?” Rory asks as he pokes his head through the doorway, undoing the tie around his neck.

 

“Where we’re going next, apparently,” replies the Doctor with a rueful sigh as he pushes a few buttons.

 

“So, where _are_ we going next?” asks Rory, coming fully into the room, stuffing the tie into his pocket.

 

“Is there an echo in here?” the Doctor says to himself as he fiddles with a lever. The console emits a flurry of _beeps_. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, stop giggling, you silly girl,” he mutters to the TARDIS, whose lights flicker in amused reply.

 

Amy and Rory ignore them.

 

“Somewhere not terribly dangerous,” Amy says. “But that’s as far as we’d gotten before you came in.”

 

“Ah,” says Rory, nodding emphatically. “Yes. Not dangerous. I like that.”

 

“Thought you might,” Amy replies, smiling, as she strides up to him and winds her arms around his neck. Rory smiles back and puts his arms loosely around her waist. He's amused to see that he was right; Amy is dressed in a pair of tight jeans and an oversized green jumper, and her feet are bare. Her hair is still curled and her breath smells like frosting and champagne, and Rory feels like he could stand here just holding her forever and he'd be happy.

 

“Should we go visit someone?” asks the Doctor. “Haven’t done that lately. That’s always fun, and usually it isn’t dangerous. Well, not too dangerous. Mostly. Sometimes.”

 

“Sometimes?” says Rory, warily, as his eyes leave Amy’s face to look over towards the Doctor.

 

“Come on, Rory,” says the Doctor, grinning, as he looks at himself in a shiny bit of the TARDIS controls and tweaks his bow tie, “you’ve known me long enough to know that I can never guarantee a _completely_ danger-free adventure. It’s not really an adventure if there’s absolutely _nobody_ trying to kill you.”

 

“That’s…very inspiring,” says Rory, releasing Amy and sitting down on a stair, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt.

 

“So?” says the Doctor expectantly, rubbing his hands together. “What shall we do? Visit someone in Earth’s history? Go to a far-off planet with purple skies and gelatinous lime-green oceans and talking rainbow-colored wildebeests? Though, on second thought, we might not want to go there. The inhabitants have got sort of a thing about females with red hair; they might kill Rory for marrying one. They like their red-headed warrior goddesses to be chaste.”

 

“Chaste? Fat chance of that,” mutters Amy with a derisive snort, plopping down next to Rory and leaning back on her elbows, stretching out her long legs in front of her. “Though I’d make a fabulous warrior goddess.”

 

“No, thanks,” replies Rory. “I’ve already died once. Don’t really feel like doing it again.”

 

“Ah, once is nothing,” says the Doctor cheerfully. “I’ve done it loads more times than that.”

 

“That’s not very helpful,” says Rory. “Or encouraging.”

 

“Well, come _on_ , then,” says the Doctor impatiently, turning to pull a twisty-looking lever near his left ear. “Pick someone.”

 

“Shakespeare?” Amy suggests.

 

“Met him already,” replies the Doctor. “Rather not meet him again. I hate repeats.”

 

“Dickens?” says Rory.

 

“Ditto.”

 

“Let’s go visit King Arthur,” says Amy.

 

“I don’t think that qualifies as ‘not terribly dangerous,’” says Rory uneasily, looking down and fiddling with a loose thread on his cuff.

 

“Come on, Rory, it might be fun. I’ve always wondered what he was like.”

 

“I haven't actually done that yet,” says the Doctor. At the same time, Rory says, before he can stop himself, “Bit of a wanker, actually.”

 

Both the Doctor and Amy turn to stare at him. Feeling their gaze, Rory raises his eyes. “What are you looking at me like that for?” he asks warily.

 

“You met King Arthur?” Amy asks incredulously, sitting up straight.

 

Rory clears his throat nervously. “Yeah. Well, Plastic-Me did. In that other time, or whatever,” he says with a small shrug. “He came to see the Pandorica. A bunch of the knights did; it was some sort of Holy Quest for them, I guess, journeying to the Pandorica or something.”

 

“What happened?” Amy’s eyes are huge with anticipation. Even the Doctor stops what he's doing to regard Rory with interest.

 

“Nothing much,” says Rory, beginning to fidget from the attention. “He was with some of the knights and they came to see it and I told them off. Though they couldn’t see me at first. I never showed myself if I didn’t have to.”

 

“What, and they just turned around and walked away?” asks the Doctor scornfully, returning his attention to the TARDIS console. “That’s disappointing.”

 

“No, not exactly,” replies Rory slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “They said they had to open it to fulfill their Quest. They were rather snippy about it, too, all, ‘Knave! Doth ye not know that ye speaketh with Arthur, King of the Britons?’ and threatening to cut off my head and whatnot. And I told them that I didn’t care if I was speaking with God Himself, and to go ahead and try me.”

 

“Then what?”

 

“Then I walked out of my hiding spot and they saw me, and they asked if I was the Centurion, and I didn’t know about the legend stuff at that point, so I said, ‘Am I what?’ Then they asked if I was the man who guarded the Pandorica and I said yes.”

 

“ _And_?” the Doctor waves a hand impatiently.

 

“Well,” Rory says, reaching up to tug nervously on a slowly-reddening ear, “ _then_ they turned around and walked away.”

 

“You mean to tell me that you frightened away the Knights of the _Round Table_ just by telling them who you were?” asks Amy.

 

“Is that really so hard to believe?” asks Rory indignantly.

 

“Well, you don’t exactly look threatening,” replies Amy with an apologetic shrug. “Even with the Roman outfit.”

 

Rory sighs, conceding that point. “Well, I had been guarding it for over four hundred years by then,” he says. “People talk.”

 

“You scared off a bunch of famous knights, and, no doubt, countless other unsavory characters, kept the Pandorica safe as houses for _two thousand years_ , and now you're worried about a terribly dangerous _planet_?” says the Doctor, shaking his head in disbelief. “I should think the planets should be worried about a terribly dangerous _Rory_.”

 

Rory blushes. “That was Plastic-Rory. I'm not so dangerous anymore.”

 

“You might be surprised,” the Doctor replies, gazing at Rory, his forehead crinkling. “You humans are always full of surprises; like crackers at Christmas. Though, it’s rather interesting that you can remember all that,” he adds. “Can you remember everything?”

 

“Not most of it,” lies Rory. “Though that's probably because a lot of the time it was rather uneventful. I mean, every hundred years or so, there’d be a war, so I’d move the Pandorica around, or someone would claim the Pandorica for the Church or for Spain or in the Name of King So-and-So, and then I’d pop out and scare them away or follow them to wherever they were taking it if there were too many of them, but other than that, it just sat there and I just stood there, watching. And waiting.” _For two thousand very long, very lonely years_ , Rory thinks, though he doesn't say it out loud.

 

As far as he's concerned, Amy is never going to know just how long and lonely those years had been, or how he remembers all sixty gazillion minutes of it (he can't be bothered to figure out just how many minutes are in two thousand years, but it's a _whole damn lot_ , and that's good enough).

 

He'd had no one to look at except those he had to frighten off (and the occasional wild animal that wandered by), no one to talk to except himself and Mostly-Dead-Amy-in-the-Pandorica (no one actually wanted to talk to him, really talk; they either came or left frightened of him, except that one reporter in the 1920's, when the Pandorica had been moved to London. Rory didn't give her an interview because she was tall and red-headed and very, very Scottish, but she wasn't _Amy,_ and just looking at her made him ache for Amy in a way he hadn't in over five hundred years, and so he was rather more abrupt with the reporter than necessary).

 

And yet, no matter how many years had gone by, he always remembered everything about Amy. The color of her eyes and the way they flashed when she was excited or annoyed; the lilt of her voice; her red, red hair that was always soft and smelled like flowers (and the temper that matched it); and the way her legs looked in those ridiculously short skirts she wore that always made his mum glare at Amy whenever she saw her.

 

And now, with Amy sitting next to him, her voice filling his ears like music and the smell of her soft red hair filling his nostrils, her leg warm against his, he can't decide if the best moment of his life was his wedding or the instant he'd walked into the Pandorica room, ready to kill whoever was threatening it, and seen Amy, gloriously alive and far more beautiful than he'd remembered.

 

“My hero,” Amy says, beaming, as she leans over to plant a kiss on Rory’s (now very red) cheek and lace her fingers through his.

 

Rory just flushes even redder and ducks his head, embarrassed.

 

Amy grins suddenly. “So, does this mean Rory is older than you are, Doctor? After all, you’re a wee nine-hundred-year-old. He’s more than twice your age, now.”

 

“Then what does that make you?” replies the Doctor, grinning back. “You’re, what, twenty-one? Rory’s robbed the cradle.”

 

“That’s a rather uncomfortable thought,” says Rory with a grimace. “I’m not really two thousand years old, am I?”

 

“You aren’t and you are,” replies the Doctor enigmatically. “Just like those memories did and didn’t happen. Your body isn’t that old, but there’s a part of your mind that is. The part that remembers.”

 

“Is that bad?” asks Rory.

 

The Doctor shrugs carelessly. “Dunno. Could be. Though you aren't insane yet, which is a good sign. But it could also be useful. You could write a book on the history of Western Civilization from a first-person perspective. Or be a tour guide at the Ancient Earth Virtual Museum on the third moon of Saturn in the sixty-third century. Though I think you'd have to agree to have your life-essence transferred to a hologram to do that.”

 

“No holograms,” says Rory firmly. “I was already a robot, for God's sake. And I hang out with a time-traveling alien. I'd be a one-man Science Fiction convention if I was a hologram, too.”

 

“They're still interested in the first century forty-two centuries from now?” says Amy curiously.

 

“Sure,” replies the Doctor. “Why not? You lot are interested in what happened six _million_ years ago; why wouldn't they be interested in what happens six thousand years ago?”

 

“I suppose that makes sense,” says Amy.

 

“Of course it does. And you still haven't told me where you want to go.”

 

“Don't you know any planets that are _not_ terribly dangerous and don't have a thing for red-headed women or grudges against bow ties or two-thousand year-old former robots?” says Rory.

 

“All that _at once_?” asks the Doctor, scrunching up his nose. “I suppose I could find one, if I look hard enough.” And he punches a few buttons on the typewriter in the middle of the console, and pulls on a spiral-y something that squeaks, and with a grin and a “Geronimo!” they're off.

 

And despite the Doctor's protestations otherwise, (“They were perfectly okay with _neck_ ties the last time I was here!”) it is a terribly dangerous planet. And as he watches his wife scamper after the Doctor again, Rory just sighs and follows her. After all, he kept Amy safe for two thousand years. He can do it for one more day.


End file.
